The Smallest Things

RPG system: LARP
Participants: 8 players, Characters who are the children in the family: 4, Stuffy characters -- have interaction restrictions: 4

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Description

“Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.” — Winnie the Pooh

The four children in the Markham family love their stuffed animals, and their stuffed animals love them. Each child has a stuffy who is their particular favorite, and like Calvin and Hobbes, or Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh, they go on adventures together and interact with each other. When the Markham parents announce they will be getting a divorce, the children’s stuffies want to help them come out the other side.

This game is a magical realism slice-of-life exploration of the relationships among a group of siblings and their stuffed animals. Players who play the stuffies will be restricted in how they can interact with the children at various times during the game (for example, when adults are in the room, stuffies cannot move or talk at all). There will be a workshop (likely running ~45 min.) before the game begins to build characters and define modes of interaction, especially between each child and their favorite stuffy. After the workshop, the game will proceed through structured scenes, each roughly 15 minutes long, including dream sequences between each child and their favorite stuffy, group interactions with all characters present, and group interactions where the children and stuffies are separate from each other. In the second scene, the children will be told their parents are getting divorced, and they will spend the remainder of the game processing this information. (Parents will be played by NPCs.)

The game will involve significant improvisation and creation of content during the game — prompts will be provided to assist in idea generation at various points. Furthermore, players should not expect clear resolutions by the end of game. The purpose of this game is to allow players to explore interactions and emotions together, not to work toward any defined outcome.

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